So declared Larry Flynt, founder of the Hustler magazine empire that has made millions photographing nude women. Flynt proffered his enthusiastic endorsement in an interview with Bloomberg.

Flynt’s endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, a feminist icon, is ripe for ridicule and taking shots at the Clintons, of whom Flynt has long been a big supporter. It would be easy to simply mock it. That, however, would be a mistake. Behind Flynt’s endorsement of Mrs. Clinton are some serious issues and concerns.

Among them, Bloomberg noted Flynt’s “animating impulse”: the future of the Supreme Court. “If Hillary gets in,” explains the Hustler publisher, “chances are she’s going to have an opportunity to appoint two, maybe three justices … and we could shift the balance there.”

No question about that. The structure of the high court relates to how Flynt is permitted to do “business.” But even then, there’s more to the story.

I was forced to dig into the tawdry Flynt-Clinton relationship in my 2007 book on Mrs. Clinton, “God and Hillary Clinton.” In that book, I detailed a scarcely acknowledged fact concerning the Clinton years—namely, that Bill’s presence in the Oval Office was a boon for the porn industry.

The green light was directly traceable to the Clinton administration. In the 1980s, the porn industry was on the defensive, targeted by the Reagan administration, notably the vigilant efforts of Attorney General Ed Meese. Then, in the early 1990s, federal porn prosecutions suddenly halted with the arrival of the Clinton administration and its “different priorities” under President Clinton’s Justice Department. “Under Attorney General Reno,” noted Frontline, “federal prosecutions slowed dramatically, and the obscenity task force effectively went out of business.”

The Hustler “empire” was so ecstatic with Bill Clinton that Larry Flynt went to bat for him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, investigating the sexual lives of the president’s opponents. So busy was Flynt that Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly christened him “the president’s pornographer.”

Flynt is the first to gratefully admit that the porn industry enjoyed a resurrection under Bill Clinton, until things soured again for a time under George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Flynt, not coincidentally, despises Bush.

That’s another subject. As for Hillary Clinton, however, Flynt is again excited. And his excitement relates to a crucial factor: abortion. It’s the elephant in Flynt’s living room, and strikes at why this Flynt-Clinton thing has serious larger political-cultural implications.

Larry Flynt and his industry need abortion badly. And there’s no one more extreme in supporting legalized abortion than Hillary Clinton. In my book on Mrs. Clinton, I laid out at her striking stridency, going all the way back to her Arkansas gynecologist and friend, William F. Harrison, the state’s leading abortionist, who snuffed out the lives of literally tens of thousands of unborn babies. I interviewed Harrison for the book. He adored Hillary and her zealousness for “abortion rights.”

Of course, that’s what Larry Flynt and the porn industry need in the White House. When one of his female “performers” accidentally gets pregnant, Flynt wants her to head to a Planned Parenthood clinic. Many of his male consumers likewise want abortion legal, to free them of certain moral responsibilities. They’re depending on Mrs. Clinton to keep that spigot flowing.

Never mind, of course, that this blatant sexual objectification and exploitation of women for purely selfish male-centered reasons ought to infuriate feminists like Mrs. Clinton. For radical feminists, however, Flynt is tolerated because he supports their high priority: legalized abortion. Indeed, feminists forgave so much of Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct for the same reason. This was unforgettably and crudely expressed in 1998 by journalist Nina Burleigh, who covered the White House for Time. I will not quote her graphic comment, but, in short, she fully defended Bill Clinton’s sexual ruination of very young women (interns, no less) “just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

Obscene? Yes. But that’s Larry Flynt’s racket. He is banking on a President Hillary Clinton being good for him and his industry. And that’s no laughing matter.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/07/larry-flynts-endorsement-of-hillary-clinton-no-laughing-matter/feed/0STREAMING VIDEO – Dr. Paul Kengor discusses his book “Dupes” at The Institute of World Politicshttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/07/streaming-video-dr-paul-kengor-discusses-his-book-dupes-at-the-institute-of-world-politics/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/07/streaming-video-dr-paul-kengor-discusses-his-book-dupes-at-the-institute-of-world-politics/#commentsMon, 06 Jul 2015 14:25:20 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11995On Monday June 29, Dr. Paul Kengor, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, spoke at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. In this interesting video, Kengor discusses his book, “Dupes: How the Communist Left Has … More>]]>

On Monday June 29, Dr. Paul Kengor, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, spoke at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. In this interesting video, Kengor discusses his book, “Dupes: How the Communist Left Has Manipulated the Progressive Left for a Century.” He presents aspects of his extensive research on the role of the “dupe” in modern American history, exploring how many progressives have been manipulated to aid the communist agenda.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/07/streaming-video-dr-paul-kengor-discusses-his-book-dupes-at-the-institute-of-world-politics/feed/0The “Takedown” of Family and Marriage Part Two: V&V Q&A with Dr. Paul Kengorhttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/06/the-takedown-of-family-and-marriage-part-two-vv-qa-with-dr-paul-kengor/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/06/the-takedown-of-family-and-marriage-part-two-vv-qa-with-dr-paul-kengor/#commentsWed, 17 Jun 2015 14:43:33 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11921V&V: Dr. Kengor, picking up from our previous interview on your new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” briefly recap your thesis for us.

Kengor: Sure. Takedown details the far left’s quest to redefine, and in some cases outright abolish, the traditional family and marriage from the 1800s to today. It notes that gay marriage is serving as a Trojan horse for the far left to secure the takedown of marriage it has long wanted, and countless everyday Americans are oblivious to these older, deeper, destructive forces long at work. The typical gay-marriage advocate is not aware of this much older and more sinister ideological history.

V&V: What do you say to those who dispute your thesis?

Kengor: Well, I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant, but it’s not something that is disputable. Look, the facts are very simple: for some two centuries, extremist elements, from radical socialist utopians to communists to secular progressives, have sought to redefine and reshape and fundamentally transform the natural, traditional, Biblical, nuclear family. In gay marriage, they finally have a vehicle with mainstream public support to enable that redefinition, that reshaping, that fundamental transformation. There’s no disputing that. People may not like to hear it. I don’t like it either. But it’s not a matter of dispute.

V&V: So, which side are the bad actors, or the ones acting in bad faith?

Kengor: Again, it isn’t usually gay Americans or the typical millennial stumping for gay marriage; they’re motivated by what they believe are beneficent and entirely un-sinister forces: their notions of love, freedom, tolerance, “equality.” I get that. I do not agree with their applications, but I fully understand that (for most of them) their intentions are not malicious. They do not see themselves as working on the same page as communists or whatever other type of left-wing radicals. And indeed, this isn’t a willful conspiracy. Nonetheless, the far left could care less how the rest of the culture gets there, with whatever slogans or well-intended notions, so long as it gets there.

V&V: You mention in “Takedown” having received an important email about a year ago from someone responding to an article you did on gay marriage. He was once part of the “gay left.” Tell us what he said and how it motivated you.

Kengor: He noted that most gay people, who are either not especially political or certainly nowhere near the extreme left, have no idea how their gay-marriage advocacy fits and fuels the far left’s anti-family agenda, and specifically its longtime takedown strategy aimed at the nuclear family. He is exactly right, and inspired me to begin collecting the material that became this book. Most of the gay people I have known are Republicans, not leftists. Generally, I have always had no problem dialoguing with them, though it is now getting more difficult, as liberals are doing their best to convince gays that I, as a conservative, hate them. It’s an uncharitable smear, based on great crudeness and ignorance, which utterly misunderstands conservatism.

That kind of nasty intolerance by liberals is terribly divisive, destroying real dialogue and civil debate.

But as for gay people, even when they’re socially liberal—and, even then, mainly on matters like gay rights—the gay people I’ve met have been economic conservatives, not to mention pro-life on abortion, which I always especially appreciated. But in signing on the dotted line for gay marriage, they have, whether they realize it or not (again, most do not), enlisted in the radical left’s unyielding centuries-old attempt to redefine the family.

V&V: So, you believe that unlike the older leftist extremists who sought to deliberately undermine the traditional family, the vast majority of today’s proponents of same-sex marriage have friendly motives?

Kengor: Yes, I think that’s largely true for the typical supporter of same-sex marriage—though there are, admittedly, some supporters who candidly admit that they’re looking to take down marriage. They’re very open about it. I quote them in the book.

V&V: You write that you, as a Christian, have no right to redefine marriage.

Kengor: I believe that marriage is not ours to redefine. Christians like myself believe that creating our own definition of marriage would blaspheme God, who “created them male and female.” What God joined together man cannot tear asunder. That’s in Genesis (Old Testament) and Matthew (Jesus himself speaking in the New Testament). And beyond that, words have meanings. A cat is a cat, a dog is a dog, a tree is a tree, and marriage is marriage. If gay-marriage advocates would like, they can call their new spousal arrangements something else, but I personally and religiously cannot concede to join them in designing new configurations of “marriage.” To me and billions before me, marriage is a male-female creation determined by nature and nature’s God.

V&V: In fact, in the previous interview, you said that those eager to redefine marriage were acting as their own gods, with their own definitions of morality, of right and wrong, of marriage.

Kengor: Correct. In my faith tradition, marriage was instituted as a male-female bond by Christ and is literally sacramental. It would be downright heretical to arrogate unto myself the extraordinary ability to define what is marriage. Liberals can happily take up that task to themselves, but I will not. I already have enough to answer to God for. It’s funny, liberals accuse same-sex marriage opponents of arrogance. That’s hardly the case. We have humbled ourselves to an absolute Creator’s position that we believe we have no right to change.

Gay marriage, bigotry and the public interest.

V&V: Let’s get back to your historical treatment. Give us the three main points that you want people to take away from “Takedown.”

Kengor: First, people need to understand that, for two centuries, the far left—from communists to socialists to various self-styled “progressives”—have sought to reorder the natural-traditional-biblical understanding of family and marriage. From the likes of Marx and Engels to Herbert Marcuse, Kate Millett, Betty Friedan, the Bolsheviks, the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxists, to a host of 1960s radicals and many others still, they created their own definitions of marriage, family, parenting, education, sexuality, even gender. They spoke openly and candidly of what some called “abolition of the family.” In fact, those are the exact words of Marx and Engels in the “Communist Manifesto.” Marx once wrote to Engels, “Blessed is he who has no family.”

Second, for the first time ever, the far left has finally found a vehicle to enable this long-sought takedown of family and marriage: gay marriage. This 21st century novelty is utterly without precedent in the ancient sweep of Western/Judeo-Christian history. Though communists, socialists, and even early progressives could have never conceived of the idea of same-sex marriage, they are now firmly on-board for this fundamental transformation of marriage and family. Amazingly, groups like Communist Party USA, its flagship publication “People’s World,” and even Fidel Castro’s Cuba—once militantly anti-gay—now support gay marriage.

And third, the American mainstream and even the gay community itself have no idea that their support of same-sex marriage actually enables the far left to achieve this takedown. Most chillingly, their support of gay marriage also allows the far left to successfully attack religion—its long-reviled foe—in a way it never thought possible with such wide public acceptance.

V&V: That part is indeed chilling, and a major part of your book. You give numerous examples of how the far left has used these ideas on remolding family and marriage as a tool to hammer religion. Dr. Kengor, perhaps we can pick up with that in the next interview?

Kengor: Let’s do that.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/06/the-takedown-of-family-and-marriage-part-two-vv-qa-with-dr-paul-kengor/feed/0The “Takedown” of Family and Marriage: V&V Q&A with Dr. Paul Kengor on his latest bookhttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/06/the-takedown-of-family-and-marriage-vv-qa-with-dr-paul-kengor-on-his-latest-book/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/06/the-takedown-of-family-and-marriage-vv-qa-with-dr-paul-kengor-on-his-latest-book/#commentsMon, 08 Jun 2015 19:55:49 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11886Editor’s note: The following is part one of a series of Q&As with Professor Paul Kengor about his new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage. If you would like to interview … More>]]>Editor’s note: The following is part one of a series of Q&As with Professor Paul Kengor about his new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage. If you would like to interview Dr. Kengor on his book, please respond to this email or contact him directly at pgkengor@gcc.edu.

V&V: Dr. Kengor, you’re an established bestselling author who has written over a dozen books on the Cold War, communism, socialism, conservatism, progressivism, as well as biographies of figures as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton, why this topic in this book? Why wade into this Culture War issue?

Kengor: The answer is precisely because of my background in those areas. I know from decades of research, study, writing, and lecturing that the political left—first with communists, socialist utopians, and then on to secular “progressives”—have sought to reshape, redefine, and effectively take down natural-traditional-biblical family and marriage for two centuries. They’ve long looked to alter the so-called “nuclear family,” which they saw as an outright menace. I know that ideological past. I know how it fits into the present. Most people don’t, including those today who are willing to redefine the historic Western/Judeo-Christian conception of male-female marriage. The vast majority of those who are willing to do that have no idea of the deeper, darker ideological-historical forces long at work in this wider movement. They are signing on to something that, whether they know it or not—most do not—have important links to much older and more sinister attempts by the far left to redefine family and marriage.

“Professors You Need to Know”

V&V: Could you expand upon your point on the lack of understanding by the “vast majority” advocating same-sex marriage today?

Kengor: Yes. The typical American who supports same-sex marriage has friendly motives, looking to extend what the current culture deems a new “right” or new “freedom” to a new group. I get that. I don’t agree, but I understand. Unfortunately, these Americans don’t realize that, for the far left, gay marriage is a vehicle, a kind of Trojan horse, to achieve what the earliest radicals on the far left, and specifically Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, called the “abolition of the family.” Marx and Engels noted then, way back in 1848, that the abolition of the family—this bold ambition to redesign the original Designer’s conception of marriage—was already “an infamous proposal of the communists.” To many Americans, gay marriage is about “marriage equality,” but to the far left, it’s about the final takedown of the family that it has long desired.

By the way, I must underscore up front that gay people are absolutely correct in noting that heterosexuals—Christians included—have done an excellent job themselves in hurting marriage, which, for Christians, is supposed to be sacred. Through divorce, infidelity, abortion, men and women have pounded marriage and family mercilessly. But even with these self-inflicted wounds, which are recent on the historical-social radar, marriage as an institution survived, and was never redefined. Same-sex “marriage” will forever redefine marriage’s once-established boundaries. It’s the breach that changes everything. That’s the difference.

V&V: You state clearly and repeatedly at the start of your book that you’re not alleging that today’s gay-marriage advocates are part of a grand communist conspiracy. Why are you so sensitive about making that clear?

Kengor: Because I know how easily these things get caricatured by opponents. Yes, I very carefully state that this isn’t a conspiracy. I want to be clear on this. I implore people not to caricature me and this important reality that needs to be understood. We do a disservice to the truth when we boil down complex things to simple caricature.

However, just as we can easily overstate things, we can also easily understate them, and to do the latter likewise would be a mistake here.

What the left has steadfastly said and written and done to marriage and the family over the last two centuries cannot be ignored. Those actions have been undeniable contributing factors—along with many other factors—that in part help explain where we are today.

Same-sex marriage is not a Marxist plot. It is, however, a crucial blow to marriage—the only blow that will enable a formal, legal redefinition that will open the floodgates to all sorts of new configurations beyond our multi-millennia Western standard based on natural law and the laws of God. It has distinct origins traceable in part to the far left’s initial thrusts at this once unassailable monogamous, faithful male-female institution.

V&V: At the opening of the book, you further caution: “I am not laying the entirety of the culture’s collapse at the feet of communists. I am not asserting that Marxists have given us gay marriage.”

Kengor: That’s correct. And yet, as I note after that quotation, what the left has steadfastly done to marriage and the family over the last two centuries—from Marx and Engels and early utopian socialists like Robert Owen and Charles Fourier to modern cultural Marxists and secular progressives—cannot be ignored. The current rapid redefinition of the male-female marital and parental bond that has undergirded civilization for multiple millennia is the end-road of a steady evolution that should not be viewed entirely separate from some very successful attacks by the radical left. The journey had many prior destinations. A people do not just one morning wake up and ditch the sacred and natural character of the male-female marital union that served their parents, grandparents, and great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. Ground had been plowed to ready this soil.

V&V: And it was the far left that helped ready the soil?

Kengor: Absolutely. No question.

V&V: As you note, however, the likes of Marx and Engels and the many socialist utopians that you detail were not advocating homosexuality or certainly gay marriage.

Kengor: Of course, not. Sure, some of them, especially the cultural Marxists, were pushing sexual intercourse within the same gender, but anyone advocating something as culturally unthinkable as male-male or female-female “marriage,” in any time other than ours, would have been hauled off by authorities as dangerous public menaces. Marx and Engels were under surveillance by the governments in their countries simply for arguing for non-monogamous marriage. Even gay people weren’t thinking they’d soon live in a culture where not only was the mainstream population supportive of gay marriage but where liberals—in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity”—would be suing, picketing, boycotting, demonizing, and dehumanizing a Baptist grandma who begs them not to force her to make a cake for a gay wedding. Marx and Engels and even wild cultural Marxists like Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich—who broke down sexual barriers in areas like homosexuality and bisexuality—would be rolling over in their graves. Nonetheless, they would be thrilled to see that every-day (non-communist) Americans have finally found a vehicle to assist the long-time communist dream of “the abolition of the family.”

V&V: But you do emphasize one important source of clear commonality, from the early 19th to early 21st centuries, that unites these old left-wing extremists with modern liberals in their general willingness to redefine marriage and family. What is it?

Kengor: Yes, it is this: As modern liberalism/progressivism and the Democratic Party have become increasingly secular, often anti-religious, or certainly dismissive of traditional notions of morality, this striking willingness of individuals to redefine marriage has become possible. For communists, two centuries ago and still today, that requisite anti-religious secularism has been there all along. That disregard if not outright rejection of Christian ethics has brought all of these forces full circle in a joint willingness to permanently alter the historic Western/Christian understanding of male-female matrimony.

They share the fatal conceit first expressed in the Garden of Eden: Ye shall be as gods.

“Bogie and Bacall and Hollywood’s Communists”(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

V&V: What do you mean by that?

Kengor: They are their own determinants of truth, of morality, of what is right and wrong. They render unto themselves the right to determine everything from what is marriage to what is life. These things used to be the province of nature and nature’s God. Now, each and every individual renders that right unto himself or herself. And when someone disagrees with them, they are often attacked with fire and brimstone.

V&V: Clearly, you’re coming at this from a religious perspective.

Kengor: My position is 100 percent consistent with my faith. But I come at this issue not only spiritually but with numerous other influences that have shaped society’s positon on marriage and family for, oh, several thousand years. It has long been common sense and experience that the best thing for a society and for children is a home with a mother and father. Pope Francis says that every child has a “right” to a mother and father. To be sure, not all children will get that. But when they don’t, it hasn’t been because the culture and state are creating a new form of “marriage” that is motherless or fatherless. A fatherless or motherless home has never been what society has strived for as a matter of deliberate policy. That is now changing with this fanatical, no-second-thoughts push for gay marriage.

V&V: We’re going to pick up this conversation in our second interview, but tell readers what you describe as the “ultimate kicker” in this rapid willingness to redefine what you call “the laws of nature and nature’s God,” because it really sums up what you’ve said here today.

Kengor: It’s really a rather stunning development: The radical left could never have achieved this ultimate takedown of marriage without the larger American public’s increasingly broad acceptance of gay marriage. The public has been the indispensable handmaiden to the radical left’s ability to at long last redefine marriage and the family. That is a realization that ought to give the public pause.

V&V: One additional stunning development, a crucial point we’ll pick up in the next interview. You note that today’s communist movement is “gung ho” for gay marriage.

Kengor: That’s correct. People’s World, the flagship publication of Communist Party USA (CPUSA), is constantly pushing gay marriage. As I write, it has posts celebrating “LGBT” Pride Month. You can see this at the CPUSA website, in speeches of CPUSA leaders, and even in places like the once militantly anti-gay Cuba. This is a big deal. CPUSA once expelled gays like Harry Hay. Not anymore. Why such a shift? A major reason is that communists are anti-tradition, anti-God, anti-family, anti-marriage, and all about fundamentally transforming society. They see same-sex marriage as a major opportunity.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/06/the-takedown-of-family-and-marriage-vv-qa-with-dr-paul-kengor-on-his-latest-book/feed/0Seven Brothers? A Remarkable World War II Storyhttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/seven-brothers-a-remarkable-world-war-ii-story/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/seven-brothers-a-remarkable-world-war-ii-story/#commentsWed, 20 May 2015 17:29:28 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11850This time last year I did a commentary on five brothers who served in World War II. Very impressive. Imagine my surprise when someone who caught the commentary sent me a package with this note:

]]>This time last year I did a commentary on five brothers who served in World War II. Very impressive. Imagine my surprise when someone who caught the commentary sent me a package with this note:

“Dear Professor Kengor: Your [commentary] about the family whose five sons served in WW II was interesting. You might be interested to know about families who had more than five sons who served in WW II.”

He continued: “My mother, Stella Pietkiewicz, had seven sons serve in WW II. She had the honor to christen the plane, Spirit of Poles, because she had the most sons who served in WW II.”

Yes, seven sons.

Along with Ted Walters’ letter was an old newspaper clipping that showed six Pittsburgh-area mothers, all of Polish descent, who had 33 sons in service. Anna Lozowska, Maryanna Sawinska, Katarzyna Antosz, and Mrs. Joseph Wojtaszek each offered five boys to the cause. Honorta Lachowicz provided six sons. Stella Pietkiewicz took the prize with seven.

Bless their souls. These moms gave their boys to the cause of freedom.

The ladies were brought together by an organization called the Central Council of Polish Organizations in Allegheny County for a fundraising effort called the “Spirit of Poles” bomber campaign. The campaign sold over $500,000 worth of war bonds, a lot of money at the time.

The Polish influence is a big part of the story. World War II started in Poland in September 1939, first with the Nazis invading from the West and then the Soviet Red Army invading from the East. Ultimately, Poland suffered a higher proportion of death than any country in the war. It also had a huge Jewish population, which was corralled into dens of unspeakable evil, such as Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto. When the Nazis were finally defeated, Poland’s reward was four decades of brutal occupation by totalitarian communists headquartered in Moscow.

And so, these Pittsburgh-area Polish women knew this battle was worth fighting. Their sons did, too. And Stella Pietkiewicz gave the most.

I don’t know the fate of all 33 boys, but Stella’s sons, remarkably, all returned home safely. For the benefit of their 100-plus descendants reading now, here were the boys’ names: Edmond, Walter, Wilfred, Roderick, Vitold, Leon, and Stanley. Some of the boys later took on their father’s first name, Walter, as their last name (they added an “s,” making it “Walters”). It was much easier to pronounce and work with.

Their father was no slacker either. Walter Leon Pietkiewicz, born March 25, 1883, immigrated to America and thrived. By age 23, he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh’s pharmacy school. He became a pharmacist in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill section.

The boys were all over the map during this terrible war: Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa, Tokyo Bay, Morocco, Africa, the Middle East. Wilfred was decorated for invading and occupying Iwo Jima. His ship bombed the Japanese mainland. Edmond fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Five of the seven brothers went overseas.

Stella was apparently pretty tough herself. She gave birth to 14 children, nine boys and five girls. (One boy was born stillborn.) Ted was the only boy who didn’t serve in World War II; he was too young. He later volunteered for and served in the Korean War. Of the entire clan, only Ted and one sister, Hope, are still alive.

It’s quite a story of quite a family. And the Pietkiewicz family wasn’t the only family that lent multiple sons to the cause. The Pietkiewicz family was fortunate enough, however, to have them all return home.

But while that part of the story has a happy ending, there’s a definite tragic component: Stella did not survive the war. She died of cancer before the war ended. She didn’t live to see all her boys come home.

All that time, she kept a stoic silence. “There wasn’t talk about it [the war] around the house,” remembers Ted, who was 12 years old when the war ended. His parents “didn’t talk about it much.” The same was true for the brothers once they came home. Ted says he never heard any war stories from his older brothers. Ted’s wife, Pat, adds: “And we were with them a lot! But we never heard any war stories from them.”

They did their duty, came home, raised families, and served their country in other ways.

Seven boys. Seven boys in World War II.

How can we repay families like these for their sacrifices 70 years ago? We can start by not destroying the America they were willing to die for.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/seven-brothers-a-remarkable-world-war-ii-story/feed/0Joe McCarthy: Despicable or Prophetic?http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/joe-mccarthy-despicable-or-prophetic/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/joe-mccarthy-despicable-or-prophetic/#commentsFri, 15 May 2015 15:25:42 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11842A recent column I wrote on communism in Hollywood in the 1940s elicited strong reaction toward the person of Joe McCarthy. This was somewhat perplexing, given that McCarthy was not the front-and-center figure investigating Hollywood communism. Yet, it wasn’t surprising, … More>]]>A recent column I wrote on communism in Hollywood in the 1940s elicited strong reaction toward the person of Joe McCarthy. This was somewhat perplexing, given that McCarthy was not the front-and-center figure investigating Hollywood communism. Yet, it wasn’t surprising, given that any mention of the Stalinist sympathies of American communists prompts liberals into reflexive accusations of McCarthyism.

For the record, the investigation of communism in Hollywood was led by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which (for most of its existence) was chaired by anti-communist Democrats. The first and last heads of HCUAA (commonly but incorrectly abbreviated as “HUAC”) were Democrats: Martin Dies (Texas) and Richard Ichord (Missouri). There is much history there, but I’d like to focus here on Joe McCarthy.

“McCarthy ruined many careers and many lives,” one reader emailed me. “His name is a disgrace to America. He was a despicable human being.”

To be sure, there is no way I can here adequately resolve McCarthy’s vilification or vindication. I have colleagues I respect on both sides of that debate. My general judgment is that Joe McCarthy certainly had his failings, clearly was not always right, but also—we’ve learned—was more often right than his detractors imagined, feared, or would grudgingly concede.

Before briefly considering both sides, one thing must be understood by everyone, especially liberals: Joe McCarthy and the Senate and House of Representatives were fully justified in investigating domestic communism. (Senator McCarthy was never a member of “HUAC.”) Communist Party USA members literally swore a loyalty oath to Stalin’s Soviet Union, pledging to work to “insure the triumph of Soviet Power in the United States.” One of the Hollywood Ten, Edward Dymytryk, the only one who openly regretted joining the Party, was appalled when fellow Party members told him that in a war between the United States and USSR, they would fight for Moscow. They devotedly sided with an ideology that killed over 100 million, double the combined tolls of World War I and II.

Communist Party USA, which secretly and illegally received an annual subsidy from Moscow, was not just another political party. Its members actively worked against America and for Stalin. They were committed to overthrowing the U.S. government and replacing it with what Communist Party head William Z. Foster termed a “Soviet America.” Congress, of course, is constitutionally tasked with investigating domestic security threats. Thus, Democrats and Republicans alike believed they had to investigate this. To not do so would violate their sworn oaths—to America. Joe McCarthy was one of them.

Fair enough. The question, however, was how McCarthy then proceeded in that task.

As for his failings, liberals need no persuading. They view McCarthy as a fire-breathing monster who wrecked careers with unfounded innuendo. It is conservatives who usually need swaying on McCarthy’s failings. I would point them to the original 1954 classic by William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies, which listed 86 objections to the senator and his methods.

As to where McCarthy was right, I recommend the 2007 book by M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies. The material on China is astounding. The information on what really happened with McCarthy’s notorious list of communists is stunning. The section on Edward R. Murrow and Annie Lee Moss is maddening. The chapter, “The Caveman in the Sewer,” is infuriating. Evans listed numerous names of real communists who did terrible damage. And that’s just a brief snapshot of a 663-page book.

To be sure, Evans’ book has its critics, including Cold War historians I respect. Nonetheless, Evans marshalled a lifetime of research on McCarthy, producing the most eye-opening revisionist history on the man. If his book is only half right, that would be enough to force some major reappraisals by liberals who have long viewed Joe McCarthy as a worse demon than Joe Stalin. Liberals who refuse to read this book do so at peril to their service to truth.

Of course, the McCarthy debate will continue. Yet, information declassified and now available long after his death resolves the most important dispute: The anti-communist senator was justified in his fears that communists had indeed heavily penetrated the country. The latest research, particularly by Larry Ceplair, Steven Englund, and Allan Ryskind, estimate 200-300 communists operating in Hollywood in the late 1940s, always under concealment. And the crucial Venona decryptions yield over 350 communists in U.S. government positions during World War II, poised to do Stalin’s devastating work in Europe.

Joe McCarthy was right about this: these communists—along with the non-communist leftists they influenced—caused some serious damage. In fact, there may have been more of them causing more damage than even he feared.

Editor’s note: A shorter version of this article first appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/joe-mccarthy-despicable-or-prophetic/feed/0The Man Who Could Redefine Marriagehttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/the-man-who-could-redefine-marriage/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/the-man-who-could-redefine-marriage/#commentsWed, 06 May 2015 13:27:15 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11786A recent profile of Justice Anthony Kennedy begins with this: “The Irish Catholic boy who came of age in Sacramento after World War II is an unlikely candidate to be the author of the Supreme Court’s major gay rights rulings. … More>]]>A recent profile of Justice Anthony Kennedy begins with this: “The Irish Catholic boy who came of age in Sacramento after World War II is an unlikely candidate to be the author of the Supreme Court’s major gay rights rulings. But those who have known Justice Anthony Kennedy for decades and scholars who have studied his work say he has long stressed the importance of valuing people as individuals.”

Well, like Kennedy, I’m also Catholic, and I likewise value all people as individuals, including gay people—as does my Roman Catholic Church and Pope Francis. But why must we, therefore, reject our faith’s millennia-old, traditional-natural-biblical teaching on marriage as between one man and one woman? That’s the question, and not just for Catholics but countless non-Catholic Christians.

For Catholics faithful to their Church’s teachings, the Justice Kennedy scenario is increasingly maddening, if not dismaying. They are looking at the prospect of marriage being redefined in America based on the swing vote of this lifelong Catholic. They’re not optimistic, especially given Kennedy’s shockingly relativistic views expressed in previous major court decisions.

The most notorious was Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which enshrined Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. There, Kennedy led the majority with this breathtaking proclamation: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

That line was crafted by a Supreme Court majority that included three Reagan-Bush (first Bush) appointees, all of them Christians: Anthony Kennedy (Catholic), Sandra Day O’Connor (Episcopalian), and David Souter (Episcopalian). The authorship is usually attributed to Kennedy. Joining his slim 5-4 majority were John Paul Stevens and Harry Blackmun, who authored the original Roe decision, which he slowly crafted inside the United Methodist Church building next to the Supreme Court.

Of course, in truth, this is plainly not the Christian/Catholic understanding of liberty. What Kennedy and allies expressed is a totally non-Christian (arguably anti-Christian) and completely individualistic understanding. If you’re looking for a slogan for what both Pope Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, called the dictatorship of relativism, that statement is it. Kennedy’s formulation of liberty is a radical secular progressive’s understanding; a progressive would argue that definitions of liberty and everything else are always changing and evolving, and always up to the person or the culture of the moment.

If Anthony Kennedy’s persists in this damaging misunderstanding of liberty, next using it to justify legalized gay “marriage” on top of legalized abortion, then he could serve as a poster boy for Christian churches’ colossal failure in properly teaching the laity. We shall see.

On the plus side for faithful Catholics, the four likely votes against gay marriage are all Catholic: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and (perhaps) John Roberts. Tellingly, the four most probable “yes” votes for redefining marriage will come from Sonia Sotomayor—a secular, non-practicing Catholic—and Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan—all of which, to my knowledge, are non-practicing, non-orthodox Jews.

Who says religion doesn’t matter?

The presence or lack thereof, or level of devoutness, is at the heart of where America—from everyday citizens to justices on the high court—stand on this unprecedented cultural novelty called “gay marriage.”

Finally, an added insight into Justice Kennedy’s role at this crucial historical stage in the life of America: As noted, Kennedy was a Reagan appointee. Also nearly a Reagan appointee was Bill Clark, to whom Reagan quietly offered the Supreme Court vacancy that instead went to Sandra Day O’Connor in July 1981. Clark and Reagan were extremely close.

Reagan as governor appointed Clark (his chief of staff in Sacramento) all the way through the California court system in the 1970s, including to the state’s supreme court. There in Sacramento, Clark had a close relationship with a fellow Irish Catholic, Anthony Kennedy, who served there on the federal bench. The two had a regular one-on-one lunch together.

As Clark’s biographer, I was privy to his deep concerns over Kennedy’s decisions at the U.S. Supreme Court. He told me often that Kennedy was a man “unusually influenced” by his immediate surroundings. Clark was very humble, but he believed that if he would have accepted Reagan’s offer for the seat that went to O’Connor, he could have kept Kennedy on a path of judicial restraint and constitutionalism that (among other things) would have had Kennedy voting for the side of Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey Sr. (a pro-life Democrat) in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Clark himself likely would have authored that majority decision, which could have been a 6-3 decision.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Clark instead became Reagan’s national security adviser, where, as head of the National Security Council, he and his president laid out a remarkably bold and successful plan to defeat Soviet communism and win the Cold War. No small achievement.

For Clark, it was a great regret that he wasn’t there on the court to reverse Roe v. Wade in 1992, but, ultimately, he understood that he could only do so much. Clark’s calling—what he and Reagan called “The DP,” or “The Divine Plan”—was to win a Cold War, not to take on this element of the Culture War. The Culture War, unfortunately, was left to the likes of Anthony Kennedy.

Bill Clark died in August 2013. His old friend Anthony Kennedy is very much alive and active. For Clark, his solid Catholic education, both Augustinian and Franciscan, was central to all of his thinking. He would never have been so bold as to redefine liberty as the “right” to define one’s own meanings of human life and existence, and Clark certainly would not have rendered unto himself the right to redefine marriage. Will Justice Kennedy do so? Hey, if he has already averred that one has a right to define one’s own meanings of human life and existence, then why can’t one devise one’s own meanings of marriage?

All of America watches in anxious anticipation to see how this Irish Catholic boy from Sacramento decides. In many ways, tragically, the future of marriage resides in the hands of this one man. It should not be.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/05/the-man-who-could-redefine-marriage/feed/0Hollywood’s Blacklist and Agents of Stalin—and Hitlerhttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/04/hollywoods-blacklist-and-agents-of-stalin-and-hitler/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/04/hollywoods-blacklist-and-agents-of-stalin-and-hitler/#commentsMon, 20 Apr 2015 17:06:55 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11745Few subjects have been as addled, muddled, and befuddled as the issue of communist penetration of the American film industry. Thanks to liberals and their control of Hollywood, media, and academia, the typical take is that Hollywood in the 1940s … More>]]>Few subjects have been as addled, muddled, and befuddled as the issue of communist penetration of the American film industry. Thanks to liberals and their control of Hollywood, media, and academia, the typical take is that Hollywood in the 1940s was graced by a bunch of good-hearted “progressives” looking to make nice movies and a better world until Joe McCarthy, “HUAC,” and a swarm of red-baiting vultures descended upon some really sweet people fighting for the New Deal, for civil rights, for better government, for “social justice,” and for planting daisies all along Sunset Boulevard.

The truth, of course, is something altogether different. And few are better schooled in that truth than Allan Ryskind, who shares his life experiences on the subject in his excellent book, “Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters—Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler.” This is merely the latest in a long line of literature on just how bad were the loyalties and actions of communists in Hollywood.

Ryskind himself is the son of a Hollywood screenwriter, the acclaimed Morrie Ryskind, whose credits included (among others) his hilarious work for the Marx brothers—that is, not Karl Marx and his friends, but Groucho and his brothers. As for Karl Marx and friends—Joseph Stalin chief among them—they were the dubious cast of characters that many of Morrie’s fellow screenwriters were writing for. As a staunch anti-communist, Morrie knew better. He also knew many of his closet comrades and what they were up to.

And now, Morrie’s son has given us a 500-plus-page account. It’s an easy, engaging read, filled with facts and authoritative information that scholars as well as laymen will find valuable. There are compelling chapters on figures such as Dalton Trumbo, Arthur Miller, Hollywood commissar John Howard Lawson, the great Elia Kazan, an actor named Ronald Reagan, the shameful Stalinist propaganda flick Mission to Moscow, and Lillian Hellman—of whom Paul Johnson once wrote, “There are lies, damned lies, and Lillian Hellman.”

There is much to take away from this book, but two especially helpful contributions jump out:

For one, Allan Ryskind makes clear that the primary cadre of accused screenwriters were, in fact, not only communists, but card-carrying members of the Communist Party. That is a big deal. Most American communists did not take the major step of actually joining the Party. Only the most devout went that far. Those who did were loyal Soviet patriots. Regardless of their American citizenship, Communist Party members in the era swore an oath: “I pledge myself to rally the masses to defend the Soviet Union…. I pledge myself to remain at all times a vigilant and firm defender of the Leninist line of the Party, the only line that insures the triumph of Soviet Power in the United States.”

These comrades took literal marching orders from Stalin’s Kremlin. Most egregious, this meant that they followed Stalin even after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939, which launched World War II via the mutual agreed-upon invasions of Poland that September by the Nazis and then the Soviets. Stalin aided and abetted Hitler in that apocalyptic action, leading to not only the deadliest war in American history but, of course, Hitler’s Holocaust. In that, Ryskind is wise to include the words “Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler” in his title. If the American left was not so blindly and shockingly ignorant to this crucial historical fact, liberals/progressives would be properly outraged that American communists supported the very Soviet Union that helped enable this massacre.

Second, Ryskind provides a crucial service by listing, in an appendix that ought to be required reading in every American history course, the Communist Party card numbers of each of the Hollywood Ten. For the benefit of the widest possible dissemination, I repeat them here:

John Howard Lawson: 47275.

Dalton Trumbo: 47187.

Albert Maltz: 47196.

Alvah Bessie: 47279.

Samuel Ornitz: 47181.

Herbert Biberman: 47267.

Edward Dmytryk: 46859. (He had two additional numbers on other cards.)

Adrian Scott: 47200. (He had an additional number.)

Ring Lardner Jr.: 47180.

Lester Cole: 47226.

Most of the 10 were extremely vigorous in their Party work on behalf of the Kremlin right up until late 1947 when they were called to testify before Congress. Some, such as Bessie, had literally traveled abroad and took up arms for the communists. The left could not have been more wrong about these guys, a scandalous historical error that predominates among liberal thinking to this day.

The only one of the 10 ever to (as Ryskind put it) “renounce Communism completely” was Dmytryk.

Allan Ryskind has provided an important contribution to our knowledge and the truth about the Hollywood Ten and the seriousness of communist involvement during film the industry’s Golden Age. Now comes the real test of truth: Will the American left acknowledge and help correct the false historical narrative it has created?

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at ConservativeBookClub.com.

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/04/hollywoods-blacklist-and-agents-of-stalin-and-hitler/feed/0Men Like Stan Evanshttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/03/men-like-stan-evans/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/03/men-like-stan-evans/#commentsWed, 11 Mar 2015 19:59:29 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11679Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.

“I need to call Stan,” I told my kids as I dropped them off. It was Sunday, which was always a good day to reach Stan Evans. When he needed … More>

]]>Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.

“I need to call Stan,” I told my kids as I dropped them off. It was Sunday, which was always a good day to reach Stan Evans. When he needed me, he usually called on Sunday evenings. And when Stan wanted to talk, he kept calling until he got you. He was conservative all right—so much so that modern technologies like voicemail and (most of all) email were not options.

No, Stan preferred old stuff, especially Cold War documents on yellowed, wrinkled paper, listing names of so-called “progressives” who, Stan slowly confirmed year after year, were often not merry liberals but closet communists doing the dirty work of Moscow. And yet through it all—the documents and double-dealing and deceit—Stan always maintained his renowned humor. “Happiness is finding a declassified list of closet communists,” he once told me with a laugh.

Now, it was February 8 (which I know from my phone log), and I needed to call Stan.

I had been working on a new project, looking at the cultural Marxists from the Frankfurt School who peddled a noxious form of Freudian-Marxism intended to wreak havoc on the family, marriage, and other traditional institutions. I knew Stan was not doing well. The previous June, he told us about a terminal cancer. One doctor gave him weeks to months. Another was more optimistic. The normally optimistic Stan was leaning toward the pessimist’s prognosis. It turned out he had nine months to go.

On that, my notes show that he called me four times within about 36 hours last July 27-28. Something was pressing him. He explained right off. After telling me had been undergoing “a lot of chemotherapy” and was “very tired,” he added quite insistently: “I want you to have the McCarthy material.”

It wasn’t just that he trusted me with the material, and that I would make use of it, but he had “great respect and fondness” for Grove City College, where I teach. He had spoken here in the 1966-67 academic year, and then three decades later was recognized with an honorary degree in 1996, of which he was immensely proud.

Stan began mailing me the McCarthy materials in large Fed-Ex packages. A few days after a package would be sent, he would call, with the name “Medford Evans” (also his father’s name) appearing on our home phone receiver. “That’s Stan,” my wife would announce.

Stan would carefully explain the things he had just handed off. The information was too valuable to take to the grave. Any questions I had on anything related to certain spies, dupes, agents of influence, “Stalin pals,” and so forth, he urged me to ask before time ran out.

So, on this day, February 8, I stopped in the church parking lot, dropped off the kids, and entered Stan’s number. There was no answer, which was normal. His custom was to let the phone ring, check the number, and call right back. I started pulling out of the lot into a snowstorm when the phone rang back.

“Stan, how are you?” I asked. I was shaken by the response. His voice was the weakest I had ever heard. I immediately pulled into another church lot across the street. I could barely understand what he was saying. I felt terrible about that.

I asked him about Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School guys. I hadn’t seen much of them in his books, including his and the late Herb Romerstein’s superb Stalin’s Secret Agents. “Two names,” he almost whispered. “Richard Sorge and Franz Neumann.” The names didn’t roll out that easily. Barely audible, he said them repeatedly until I finally discerned them. I scratched them on page 136 of a nearby book on the subject by one of Stan’s late friends, another great Cold Warrior, Ralph de Toledano.

Even when he had been undergoing chemo treatments and blood transfusions, Stan’s voice was strong. He would crack some good jokes and identify some bad communists while the blood was pouring.

But this conversation was different. He knew it and I knew it. He told me he had been in and out of the hospital recently and was now being “sent home.” I figured what that meant. He told me that neither he nor his voice would be improving this time.

To try to lighten up the situation, I mentioned the upcoming CPAC. Stan had given a moving and witty speech at CPAC the year before, in what turned out to be his swan song. “That was my last speech,” he told me not long after it happened. It wasn’t totally clear if he meant it was his most recent speech or his last speech. It turned out to be the latter. The person responsible for arranging that speech made a truly inspired decision.

I asked Stan if he was planning to attend CPAC this year, sensing that was impossible. “Oh, no,” he told me stoically. “I won’t be leaving the house anymore.”

I told him I’d keep praying for him. He thanked me as always, and we said goodbye.

I planned to call Stan again—actually during my drive home from CPAC. I stupidly didn’t. He died three days later.

Men like Stan Evans are a rarity. He was as much a humorist as a conservative intellectual. He was a very funny man, always smiling, always joking, always happy, always livening up a room. He spent decades doing so much for the conservative movement with countless articles, interviews, and public appearances. He spent his final years writing important books on the epic battles of the 20th century, adding “Cold War historian” to his list of identities. That was how I came to know him. He was excited about a book he was doing on Dean Acheson, who, he told me, “has been viewed as this great Cold Warrior, but for a long time was anything but.” That book will not be written.

Men like Stan, and Herb Romerstein and Ralph de Toledano and (for that matter) Arnold Beichman and James Juliana (another close ally of Stan), all of whom died in the last few years, were so adept at Cold War research because they knew the figures who were involved, the good guys and the bad guys. When they leave us, it makes our ability to connect old but crucial dots so much harder. They were encyclopedias of knowledge who, unfortunately, could not download the information packed in their remarkable minds before they departed for the next world.

Not that Stan didn’t try. He placed an enormous amount of material online, but material that really only the likes of Stan and Herb and their fellow warriors fully understood. One afternoon at his office in Washington about five years ago, I sat with Stan and Herb and Herb’s wife, Pat, while they tried to explain a bunch of material to me. It was like an hour-long tutorial on air-traffic control.

“We’ll never know even half of it, Paul,” Stan would tell me as we sighed at the long lists of Americans who directly or indirectly served Stalin and Soviet interests after World War II. I sigh today knowing that I’ll never know even half of what he knew.

Stan Evans was a gem. The conservative movement has lost one of its most beloved figures. May he rest in peace, reconnecting with all of his friends from the 20th century that he knew so well—and may we honor him by continuing his work.

– See more at: http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/03/men-like-stan-evans/?hsCtaTracking=e6de5090-cea6-4db6-ba38-b99a1178d346%7Cac5c5d8d-af9d-4876-85f8-60b6ee1c6db7&utm_campaign=V%26V%20-%20Concise&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8ICZvOFAY0Hkw5BtiMOLGHVc83OKF1bzRUW3I3BrWmp974OnPVhz3Td0jt3uieE50iKBbWsPtMiIc025IRujlvkxgzYw&utm_content=16471499&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=16471499#sthash.zpzhaPXX.dpuf

]]>http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/03/men-like-stan-evans/feed/0Attacks on Scott Walker Remind of Reaganhttp://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/03/attacks-on-scott-walker-remind-of-reagan/
http://www.visionandvalues.org/2015/03/attacks-on-scott-walker-remind-of-reagan/#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 21:10:19 +0000http://www.visionandvalues.org/?p=11672Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.

As soon as a conservative Republican emerges as a serious presidential frontrunner, liberals in the media suddenly yank out the microscopes they’ve been keeping away from Barack Obama since 2007. … More>

]]>Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.

As soon as a conservative Republican emerges as a serious presidential frontrunner, liberals in the media suddenly yank out the microscopes they’ve been keeping away from Barack Obama since 2007. They could care less what Obama did in college, how he got into college, who paid for his college, who wrote his letters of recommendation, what his grades were, and on and on—but we already know everything about Scott Walker and college. Obama’s media protectors could give a rip that he had a mentor who was a literal card-carrying member of the Communist Party in the Stalin era. But as soon as someone like Scott Walker starts gaining ground, wow, “journalists” lunge for the magnifying glass and became real reporters again, profusely digging and questioning, looking for molehills to make into vast mountains of scandal.

On Walker, there will always be a new scandal as long as he remains viable. I don’t want to be regularly drawn into defending the man, but here are two recent episodes I’ve been asked to weigh in on, specifically because of their parallels to Ronald Reagan:

First, there was Walker’s comment at CPAC last week (I was there) on fighting ISIS and fighting government unions. Asked how he would handle a foe like ISIS as president, Walker said, “If I can take on a 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”

The answer was immediately blasted. It shouldn’t be.

Obviously, the public-sector unions that Scott Walker faced in Wisconsin are not equivalent to ISIS. They’re not beheading anyone. They’re not killers. We know this, and we know that Scott Walker knows this. In fact, the day after his CPAC comments, he explained: “My point was just, if I could handle that kind of a pressure and kind of intensity [in Wisconsin], I think I’m up for the challenge for whatever might come, if I choose to run for president.”

It’s fully appropriate and necessary for Walker to clarify that he was not equating Wisconsin public employees with ISIS, and to apologize for any such ridiculous misunderstanding, and it’s also appropriate and necessary for his opponents not to abuse his point.

Abuse his point? Yes, because he made a good one. The truth is that it isn’t easy to do what Scott Walker did as governor in Wisconsin. That’s the main reason he so impresses conservatives. The enmity and utter hatred that he and his family and extended family (including his elderly parents) felt constantly, from union members and their militant “progressive” allies in his own backyard, at the state house, in the halls, at his office, in his neighborhood, at his church, at the grocery story, at Starbucks, at the car wash, on the street, at Boy Scouts meetings, at soccer games, at dance practice, at baseball games, at theaters and musicals, and on and on and on, is something awful that people can scarcely imagine enduring. Public-sector union thugs can be brutes and can make your life miserable. For Walker, it equated to a nasty pressure that was omnipresent. In a way, it really would be more personally distressing than a president dealing with ISIS because the president, fully protected, never gets anywhere near an ISIS killer. The president faces no personal harassment from ISIS members. That’s not true for Governor Walker.

That’s his point.

It’s a point that Ronald Reagan could have related to. Asked about dealing with the Soviets, or Brezhnev or Gorbachev, Reagan often told reporters that he could handle them because he still had “scars on my back” from fighting unions.

“I know it sounds kind of foolish maybe to link Hollywood, an experience there, to the world situation,” he said from the White House, “and yet, the tactics seemed to be pretty much the same.” When aide Lyn Nofziger cautioned him about the Soviets at Reykjavik, he responded: “Don’t worry. I still have the scars on my back from fighting the communists in Hollywood.” He judged this Hollywood experience “hand-to-hand combat.”

Was Reagan thereby insulting, say, the boys who invaded Normandy and fought at Iwo Jima he experienced true hand-to-hand combat? Of course not. We know that.

Consider another moment that Ronald Reagan never forgot: As an actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he was on location in an isolated rural area when told by a crew member that he had a telephone call waiting at a nearby gas station. At the time, Reagan was preparing an important report for SAG relating to a major 1946 strike. Spearheading the strike was the Red-dominated Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), led by a thug named Herb Sorrell, who Reagan charitably described as “a large and muscular man with a most aggressive attitude.”

Reagan arrived at the gas station and answered the phone. “I was told,” he said later, “that if I made the report a squad was ready to take care of me and fix my face so that I would never be in pictures again.” Specifically, the caller threatened to splash acid upon Reagan’s unsuspecting million-dollar face—the source of his livelihood.

Such fears were nothing new for Reagan. Police began guarding Reagan’s home and children, and he began packing a Smith & Wesson revolver, which he took to bed each night.

I bet that Scott Walker had a gun for protection, or at least a security guard always near his side.

The vituperation and dripping, red-hot anger directed at Walker by unions in Wisconsin was a sight to behold. What he endured in Wisconsin was extremely distressing. But don’t expect Walker’s opponents to try to understand that.

Second, another Walker-Reagan comparison/clarification is in order. I tried to ignore it, but now Peggy Noonan has weighed in. I think I also need to step in.

As momentum builds for a possible 2016 presidential run, Gov. Scott Walker has spent more time speaking on foreign policy.

One of his talking points: Leadership trumps experience when it comes to managing affairs overseas. Look at Ronald Reagan.

That was Walker’s response Jan. 21, 2015 when he was asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about the importance of foreign policy experience. First, the governor criticized the secretary of state record of Hillary Clinton, the leading potential Democratic candidate for 2016.

Then he turned to Reagan, one of his political heroes, and one of the Republican president’s early acts in office — the mass firing of most of the nation’s air traffic controllers.

[…]

In his MSNBC interview, Walker asserted that the move was one of the most important foreign policy decisions “made in our lifetime,” showing allies and adversaries around the world “that we were serious.”

Then he added this:

“Years later, documents released from the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case. The Soviet Union started treating (Reagan) more seriously once he did something like that. Ideas have to have consequences. And I think (President Barack Obama) has failed mainly because he’s made threats and hasn’t followed through on them.”

So, Walker goes beyond stating an opinion about the foreign policy implications of Reagan’s move. He states as fact that there are Soviet documents showing the Soviets treated the Reagan more seriously because he fired American air traffic controllers.

That’s a bold claim.

A bold claim? Gee, those of us who have written about or followed Reagan have heard this account many times. What is PolitiFact so upset about? It explained its beef with Walker’s assertion:

When we asked for evidence to back the claim, both the governor’s office and Walker’s campaign cited statements from a variety of people. Each essentially said the firings showed Reagan meant what he said, and that he was to be taken seriously.

PolitiFact then listed the examples that immediately came to my mind, apparently getting them from Walker’s office and campaign. Here they are:

Reagan special assistant Peggy Noonan wrote in her White House memoir that George Shultz, who became Reagan’s secretary state a year after the firings, had called the firings the most important foreign policy decision Reagan ever made. Joseph McCartin, the author of a book on the strike, wrote that when House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a Democrat, visited Moscow not long after the strike, “he learned that the Soviet leaders had been deeply impressed by Reagan’s actions.” And Reagan biographer Edmund Morris wrote: “Former Soviet apparatchiks will tell you that it was not his famous ‘evil empire’ speech in 1983 that convinced them he meant strategic business, so much as photographs of the leader of the air traffic controllers union being taken to jail in 1981.”

Precisely, PolitiFact. That’s exactly what I remember. I don’t get it? Why are we having this conversation? What’s wrong with what Scott Walker said? PolitiFact provided its answer:

Those are perceptions of Americans, however. [Actually, no, it was Americans reporting Soviet perceptions.] Walker’s claim was the Soviets treated Reagan more seriously after he fired the controllers, and that Soviet documents prove it.

But he did not provide us anything referencing Soviet documents.

And apparently there are no such documents that have been made public.

Ah, that’s the issue? The lack of “documents?” That’s the big deal? But why? Tip O’Neill apparently talked to “Soviet leaders” and Edmund Morris’s sources were “former Soviet apparatchiks.” And George Shultz dealt with the Soviets daily. Surely that’s a solid-enough measure of evidence.

But the issue, apparently, is “documents.” No documents. Frankly, I hadn’t even noticed in my initial read that Walker used the word “documents,” even when I first read his statement on MSNBC. It went right by me. And I specialize in dealing with Cold War documents.

Nonetheless, PolitiFact continued on that point, quoting experts adamantly and testily objecting to this apparent lack of “documents.”

Five experts told us they had never heard of such documents. Several were incredulous at the notion.

McCartin, a Georgetown University labor history expert who wrote the book about the strike that Walker cited, said: “I am not aware of any such documents. If they did exist, I would love to see them.”

Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russia programs at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, told us she “had to listen to the Walker interview twice, so ridiculous is the statement about the air traffic controllers. There is absolutely no evidence of this. I would love to see the released Soviet documents on this subject that he has apparently seen.”

James Graham Wilson, a historian at the U.S. State Department, also told us he was not aware of any Soviet documents showing Moscow’s internal response to the controller firings. He speculated that there could be such records, given how some Soviet experts characterized the firings.

Wilson and other have noted the perspective of Richard Pipes, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Harvard University. Pipes said the firings showed the Soviets that Reagan was “a man who, when aroused, will go to the limit to back up his principles.”

[…]

In any case, the lack of Soviet records described by Walker is clear.

Reagan’s own ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, told us: “It’s utter nonsense. There is no evidence of that whatever.”

Nonsense? What is nonsense? Walker’s general point isn’t nonsense but apparently the lack of “documents” is being judged a gigantic faux paus by Walker. He apparently has really made a massive mistake here, I guess. PolitiFact thus concluded by applying a “rating” to Walker’s statement: “Walker cited no Soviet documents showing that the firings made the Soviets treat Reagan more seriously. And experts, several of whom felt Walker’s claim is outrageous, told us they are not aware that any such documents exist. For a statement that is false and ridiculous, our rating is Pants on Fire.”

Whoa. Now is that fair? The minute that this PolitiFact item was released, I got an email from a fellow Reagan expert who was really steamed. “Paul, you’ve got to take this on!” he wrote.

I didn’t want to take it on. I instantly recognized what Walker was talking about, and was mystified by the harsh reaction. I recalled the PATCO material being published in Peggy Noonan’s and Edmund Morris’ books, and elsewhere.

Because a politician in an unscripted TV interview referred to documents rather than reports by biographers, he’s a liar with his pants on fire? Should we hold a governor to the standard that we do scholars because he used the word “documents” in an off-the-cuff remark to a TV guy? Do we expect our politicians to be archival experts in Cold War documents in order to make general points with the utmost academic-scholarly precision?

Clearly, Walker had indeed correctly read that the Soviets were impressed by Reagan’s actions, and just as clearly assumed (understandably) that the authors he remembered writing about the incident (being authors) probably had used some sort of “documents” for their research.

But because he used a work like “documents” instead of, say, “biographers” we’re going to denounce him, “Liar, liar, pants on fire?!”

If I may dare say this, I guarantee you that I could start digging in archives, and especially the voluminous Soviet media archives that I’ve collected over the decades, and find you an example of Moscow officials communicating about Reagan and PATCO. It might take me hours or days or even weeks, but I can find them. I assure you I can. I have read hundreds of Soviet memoirs, and I could go back through and start checking those, too. If PolitiFact wants to pay me for my time (by the hour, please), I’ll start looking. But I warn them: Finding actual “documents” is never easy. It always takes a lot of time. So, this could cost them.

Another warning: Such “documents” probably will not be a big deal. They would likely simply offer a written communication of what we already knew, a mere hardcopy communication from one Soviet official to another. That’s all that “documents” often are.

So, I could dig a whole bunch for this stuff, but I doubt what I find would really add anything of value to this apparently scandalous episode.

And once I find them, should I then shout at PolitiFact, “Liar, liar, pants on fire?!”

For that matter, can PolitiFact fairly and fully judge Walker wrong without itself having dug deeper for these apparently amazingly crucial documents essential to buttressing a point that respected writers and public officials received regardless from Soviet officials? Was Tip O’Neill lying? Edmund Morris, too? Did George Shultz never hear any such thing from Anatoly Dobrynin or Andrei Gromyko or someone in the Soviet foreign ministry?

Peggy Noonan, at the end of her long piece on this, writes: “I have never heard of such documents. No one I spoke to for the book referred to them. If Walker got it wrong, he should say so. Though I’m not sure it matters in any deep way. Of course the Soviets saw and understood what had happened with Reagan and the union. Of course they would factor it in. They had eyes. They didn’t have to write it down.”

That’s right. I’ve shared thousands of perceptions from people in articles and books I’ve written. The vast majority, I’m sure, were never recorded in documents. Bill Clark, Reagan’s closest aide in the attack on the Soviet Union, had an explicit policy of not writing down sensitive information that he and Reagan feared could be leaked. Boy, if I could’ve had just one of the many napkins or paper scraps that Clark scribbled on after his meetings with Cardinal Pio Laghi, John Paul II’s apostolic nuncio in Washington, which Clark then took to Reagan to refer to while briefing the president. Unfortunately, Clark always dropped them in the trash.

The lack of those “documents” frustrated me as his biographer, but that was the way it was. It didn’t mean that those communications didn’t happen.

Here again, like the ISIS-union example, let’s focus on the point that Scott Walker was trying to make, the gist, the forest rather than the trees.

As Peggy Noonan details in her current piece, “So was Scott Walker right about the importance of Reagan and Patco? Yes.” It mattered big-time, including on the international stage and especially to Moscow. She noted George Shultz saying as much (and thus confirming Walker’s central point): “Reagan’s secretary of state George Shultz said that the Patco decision was the most important foreign-policy decision Reagan ever made.”

Walker’s catastrophic mistake was to use the word “documents.”

Alas, a final Walker-Reagan comparison:

In all of this, Scott Walker has unintentionally identified with something else he evidently shares with Ronald Reagan: the media’s ability to place every inexact word of his under microscopic scrutiny and trounce him when he isn’t perfect to the letter of the word. This is something the media does not do to Barack Obama—never has and never will.

As Scott Walker moves on, he can expect to get much, much more. Ronald Reagan certainly did. Don’t let it bother you, governor, you’re in good company.